She had to get away from him as soon as they were far enough north.
Scott drove through the gates of the Kepplar compound and pulled into the lab parking lots. They were deserted apart from the vehicles used by night security staff.
“Not here,” she said. “Go around back. There’s an entrance I can use there.”
He followed her instructions, drove around a shed and a hangar to the back of the building and parked the truck near the rear door.
“Wait here.”
“How long?”
“I’ll just be a few minutes.”
“You got a cell phone?”
“Yes, why?”
“Might need you in a hurry. Make sure it’s on. What’s the number?”
She gave it to him. He was making her real nervous. She opened the passenger door, glanced back at him.
His eyes tunneled into hers. “Be quick.”
Two simple words. Yet they tripped her up. It was the way he looked at her when he said them. Something in the deep emerald of his eyes spoke of compassion. It caught in her throat. “Thank you, Scott.”
He nodded.
She shut the door, ducked into the Kepplar building as the sun broke, feeding gold light over the horizon.
Fred Ryan was on security detail. Good. He seldom wanted to chat. Skye nodded, smiled at him, slotted her ID card into the system, strode briskly down the corridor to her lab. The sound of her boot heels clacked hollow, echoed off walls.
She was taking a risk coming here. It was costing precious time. But she’d invested too much in this predator beetle project to let Malik get the better of this, too. She would see at least this thing through.
And if she was going to have to disappear again, she needed to know the project would go ahead safely.
Skye snapped on her gloves and checked the boxes containing the control samples. The larvae looked healthy. But her practiced eye sensed something different. She peered closer. The heads of the little grubs were light brown, but the bodies seemed a little lighter than usual. More creamy-white than grayish. Or was it just the effect of the gold morning sun streaming in through the lab window?
She moved on to the pupae. They looked fine, already turning reddish brown, a sign the adults were about to emerge.
Skye moved on to the next control sample. She hesitated. Was she imagining it? The newly emerged beetles were a rich chestnut in color. But the older ones should be glossy black by now.
She frowned, flicked on the fluorescent overhead lighting. They were the wrong color. It was so subtle a variation, most probably wouldn’t notice it. But she did. Her mouth went dry. Something wasn’t right. Perhaps they were at an earlier stage of the life cycle than indicated in the log. She moved quickly to check Charly’s notes. Nothing. No mention of changes.
Skye wiped her sleeve across her brow, thinking. She was running out of time. But she couldn’t leave. Something was amiss with her project. She needed more trials.
She reached for a small tweezer-like tool, quickly plucking an adult beetle from the sample. She flicked on her microscope, placed it beneath the lens. Her pulse kicked into high gear. This was something she’d never seen in her previous samples. Minute red speckles scattered over the black-brown shell of the beetle, invisible to the naked eye.
Panic gripped her throat. Perhaps the gene had mutated. She needed to check the hundreds of newly emerged adults that would be shipped within two weeks. She needed to see that this aberration was only being demonstrated in this small control sample. And she needed to know why, what in hell it meant. She reached for another beetle. But the shrill ring in her pocket snapped her back. She fumbled, pulled out her cell.
“What?”
“Get out now! They’re coming around the front.”
Adrenaline squeezed at her lungs. Her eyes shot to the lab door, then back to her beetles. She had to make a choice.
The security alarm sounded. Someone was trying to get into the building.
Fear kicked Skye into action. She raced for the lab door, shoved it open, sped down the corridor. Fred Ryan was not at his security post. She flew out the back exit, alarm bells clanging in her ears.
Scott had the truck waiting, engine running, door open. She threw herself into the cab. He spun tires, her feet barely off the ground. He floored the gas, gunned through the parking lot.
And Skye could see why. The two men had seen them and were running for their car. She tried to duck down into the cab.
“Too late, sweetheart, they’ve seen you. And me. We’re in this together now.”
She clenched her teeth as he swerved out of the Kepplar gates and onto the road.
“Buckle up, we’re on the run.”
She turned to him. His face was pure granite, a study of self-control. Not an edge of fear.
“You’ve done this before.”
He yanked on the wheel, cut down a side road. “That an accusation?”
“Who are you?”
“Just a guy with a sense of adventure.” He grinned, pulled on the wheel again, spinning her and Honey hard up against the passenger door. “I told you to buckle up,” he yelled.
Skye pulled herself upright, grabbing for the seat belt as Scott turned again, veered down a narrow farm lane and suddenly slammed on the brakes. She lurched forward, belt cutting into her neck.
Scott peered into the rearview mirror. “There they go.”
She spun around in time to glimpse the brown sedan speeding down the road they’d just left. She slumped back into the seat, heart pounding a staccato beat against her ribs. “God, that was close.” She pushed the hair out of her face, realized she was still wearing her latex gloves. She stared at them. “What now?”
“Now you tell me the truth. Now you tell me what you’re running from.”
She opened her mouth to lie, saw the hard green glint in his eyes, shut it slowly.
“Well?”
She studied him, weighing her options. “Why should I trust you?”
“Because right now I’m all you’ve got, sweetheart.”
She swallowed under his keen scrutiny. He was right. At this moment he was all she had. And she had little doubt that if she didn’t satisfy this man, he’d ditch her. Right here on this dirt road. And it would be mere minutes before those men realized they’d ducked down one of the lanes.
Think fast, Skye. Skirt the truth. It’ll be easiest that way. She pulled her gloves off as she spoke. “I—I had a possessive boyfriend once. I think he’s come after me.”
Scott McIntyre threw back his head, laughed loud and long. Then he stopped suddenly, anger pulling the ledge of his brow low and threatening over eyes that had turned to cold, green stone. “Get real, Doctor. You think I’m buying that one?”
“You have to, because it’s the truth.” She heard the edge of desperation in her own voice. “He was violent. I had a restraining order slapped on him. It was many years ago.”
“Right. Now you’re asking me to swallow the fact that he’s in that brown sedan with some other guy, chasing you?”
“No. Like I said, I don’t know who those two men are. But I wouldn’t put it past my ex to hire two goons to come after me.”
“Sweetheart.” She heard the warning bite in his tone. “You’re pushing it. And I’m losing my patience.”
She placed her hand on his forearm. “Scott, like you said, you’re all I have right now. Why would I lie?”
“You tell me.” He stared at her hand on his arm.
“You’re so pigheaded.”
“Give me reason not to be.”
“Okay, okay. My ex had criminal connections. Mob.” She swallowed. Her throat felt as dry as the Greek hills she’d been raised in. And what she was telling Scott McIntyre wasn’t that far from the truth. Just thinking about Malik turned her stomach to water.
Something shifted in Scott’s eyes. He pulled his arm out from under her hand. “Why do you think these men had something to do with Jozsef’s disappearance?”<
br />
“I don’t know. Honest. Maybe they paid him off or something.”
“Come on, Skye. You want me to believe your fiancé, the man who loved you, took cash over a wedding?”
She looked down at her hands. “I didn’t love Jozsef,” she said softly. “And I don’t think he loved me.”
Scott was silent for a second. He cleared his throat. “Where is this ex-boyfriend of yours now?”
“Don’t know. The last I knew he’d gone into hiding.”
“When was this?”
“It was years ago. I was young. Very young. I really don’t want to talk about it.”
He tapped his hand on the wheel, thinking. “How young?”
“Nineteen. Please…can we go now?”
His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “Here they come…hang on to Honey!” He shifted gears, floored the gas. She grabbed the dog, the momentum kicking them both back, her head cracking against the rear cab window. Skye screwed her eyes shut. She couldn’t look. She felt suddenly exhausted. The pain in the back of her head thumped along with the panicked rhythm of her heart.
She’d told him too much. In her desperation she’d skirted too close to the truth. Her world was closing in on her and she had no clue why. She clung to Honey with both arms, taking comfort from the dog.
And she said a silent prayer in her mother tongue as the truck ripped through the farm fields.
Chapter 7
The sunny morning gave way to an afternoon with heavily bruised skies and spitting rain. Scott clicked on the windshield wipers and cranked up the heat in the cab. He cast a glance Skye’s way. She was still asleep. Honey, too, her head resting on Skye’s lap. His eyes flicked up to Skye’s face. The strong and wary woman was gone. Sleep had stolen her defences. She looked, instead, like an innocent child cuddled up with her pet.
She looked as vulnerable as the night he’d held her in his arms. The thick fringe of her dark lashes stark against the paleness of her skin. Her lips parted slightly, her breaths soft and regular.
Why are you running, Doctor?
He’d find out sooner or later.
He turned his attention back to the road. He’d shaken the tail, left the two cops good and stuck in the freshly ploughed earth of a farmer’s strawberry field.
Scott turned down another narrow farm road. He was making his way south down the Saanich Peninsula, using a network of tiny backroads. Skye had said she wanted to go north. But to do that, he first had to cut back around the Saanich Inlet. He’d wake her for further directions when they reached the Malahat pass.
The highway started to climb up the Malahat. Thick mist closed in a shroud around them. Scott frowned. With temperatures like this there was a real threat of snow in higher elevations. He wondered just where in the mountains the doctor wanted to go.
But he had her right where he wanted, under his watch 24/7.
Sleet started to click and spit against the window as they reached the summit of the Malahat, but he didn’t have the heart to wake her yet. He decided to wait until they reached Duncan. They’d stop to refuel and he’d touch base with Rex from there.
He checked his rearview mirror. Good. Still no sign of the brown sedan. He started the descent.
And as he did, he had an odd sense the two of them had just entered uncharted territory.
“The GPS alarm has sounded.”
Every muscle in his body strapped tight. “She has crossed out of bounds?”
His assistant nodded.
He seated himself in front of the terminal and stared at the tiny red dot blinking on the screen. The tracking device showed she had indeed strayed out of the boundary they’d set. She was out over the Malahat, headed north.
Why?
“Alert our operatives to the coordinates. I want to know the instant they have a visual.”
Skye jolted out of her sleep, out of her dream, panic tearing at her jugular like the rancid yellow teeth of a jackal. Disoriented, her hand flew to her throat. She frantically scanned her surroundings. And breathed deep. She wasn’t in the dry hills of Greece. She wasn’t buckled over in searing pain, running for the Albanian border.
She was with Scott McIntyre, in his truck, with his dog, surrounded by soft gray mist and gentle rain. But they were on the run. She sat bolt upright, eyes wide. They were entering some town. “Where are we?” she demanded.
“Welcome back, sleeping beauty.”
“Where the hell are we?”
“Yeah, you’re back all right. We’re entering Duncan.”
“Oh, God, I should’ve gone back to the lab. I don’t know what came over me.”
“I beg your pardon? I thought you were running for your life back there.”
“My project.” She rummaged in her pocket, pulled out her cell phone. “I’ve got to make a call.”
“What project? Your assassin bugs?”
She ignored him and punched in Charly’s number. It rang. And rang. No answer at Charly’s Kepplar extension. Skye killed the call, dialed Charly’s cell number. “Pick up girl. Pick up, Charly. Where the hell are you?”
Nothing.
“Damn.” She quickly punched in Charly’s home number.
The call clicked over to the voice mail service. “Charly, it’s me, Skye. Do not let Marshall release those beetles. I repeat, cancel the release. We need further trials. Call me as soon as you get this message. It’s urgent.”
She flipped her phone shut. Where in hell was her assistant? She should be at work now. And she always carried her cell when she wasn’t at home.
“What is it, Skye? What’s wrong with your bugs?”
Her eyes jerked up to Scott’s face. The real concern she saw there threw her momentarily. “The control group samples don’t look right. I need time to check them properly. And I need to check the adults being prepared for shipment. We can’t risk releasing them. Not yet.”
“Where is the release scheduled for?”
She gave a soft derisive laugh. “In greenhouses and fields across most of central Canada. The first shipment is due to fly out in two weeks. The West will be next.”
Scott whistled through his teeth. “This is for the whitefly epidemic, right? I read about it in the paper.”
She frowned at his piqued interest, studied his features carefully before answering. “Yes, that’s the one. I designed a bug to target the mutant whitefly. We used gene technology to adapt a subspecies of the black Asian beetle. The ones we release will be sterile so they’ll only last one life cycle.”
“That’ll keep them pretty much restricted to a target area?”
“Basically. But Kepplar is rushing it. Marshall Kane, the director, is impatient. He smells a huge contract from the States if this works as well as I thought it would.”
“Now you think it won’t?”
“Every indication was there that it should be hugely successful. But I would’ve liked more time. More trials. Just to be one hundred percent sure. Now, it looks like I was right. There are some subtle anomalies appearing. I detected them this morning. I need to research further—they could mean trouble.”
“You want to go back?”
The images from the chase this morning slammed through her brain. And a sinking realization flowed like lead to the pit of her stomach. She might never go back. She might have to disappear again. Forever. If she wanted to live. “I—I can’t go back.”
“Those men?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I can help, Skye. Maybe we can contact the police—”
“No!”
“No police?”
“Cops couldn’t help me before. There’s no reason they’ll be able to now. Those men will kill me.”
His eyes flicked to her face. “You’re serious.”
“Scott, I can’t go back.” She’d be no use dead anyway. She rubbed at the grit in her eyes. Dr. Skye Van Rijn would have to cease to exist. She could see no other way. But even so, she had a duty to stop those beetles. She had no choic
e but to call Marshall. Reluctantly she opened her phone and slowly keyed in the number for the director of Kepplar Biological Control Systems.
“Marshall Kane here.”
She swallowed. “Marshall, this is Skye.”
“Where the hell are you? There was a security breach at the labs this morning.”
“I—I heard.”
“And Charly hasn’t shown up for work, either. What in blazes is going on, Doctor?”
“I—I’m going to be away from work for a while. I— I’m pretty cut up about the wedding. I need some time.”
“I’m sorry about the wedding. I heard. But Charly—”
“I’m sure she’ll be in soon.” Skye sucked in her breath. “Marshall…the project cannot proceed.”
“Nonsense. We can manage without you.”
“Marshall—”
“You look after yourself. We’ll be fine. The bulk of your work is complete. I’ve seen your latest report.”
“No, Marshall. Under no circumstances can it proceed. There are anomalies showing up in the control group. It could be dangerous. We need more research. More time.” But she knew now she was clean out of time.
Marshall was silent.
“You’ve got to listen to me, Marshall.”
The director cleared his throat. “Dr. Van Rijn, with all due respect, as head of Kepplar, this is my decision. I’ll liaise with Charly when she gets in. Thank you for your input. And we’ll see you when you get back.”
He hung up before she could utter another word.
“Damn.” Skye slumped back in her seat. She’d have to count on Charly. But where the hell was she?
Skye could feel the heat of Scott McIntyre’s scrutiny. But to his credit, he said nothing. And she sure as hell didn’t feel like talking.
They entered the town of Duncan, lunch hour traffic pressing at their sides. Pain pressed at her head. Scott pulled into a gas station, cut the engine.
“Okay, Doctor, we stop here for gas, food, maps. Why don’t you wait for me and Honey in that diner next door while I fill up? Order me a coffee, will you?”
Skye reached for her pack, opened the truck door, swung her leg out. Then hesitated. She realized in that instant just how much control she’d placed in Scott McIntyre’s large and capable hands this morning. She’d trusted him enough to fall asleep in his truck. She’d relaxed enough to drop her defences, let years of fatigue claim her. And she’d trusted him to get rid of their tail, keep her safe, while she slept.
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